The main town event was the Christmas play at the school. The Fire Department was in charge of supplying the candy and oranges for Santa to give out at the end of the performance. He sat on the stage. The main difference in then and today was that Santa didn’t need a teacher to remind him of each child’s name. The community was a little smaller back then…and perhaps a little more close knit.
Tony Mihelich can still remember the B. B. gun he got when he was 8. “It Was a Red Ryder…that was all they had back then.” Tony was still living in the back of The Croation Hall, which had already been moved to it’s present location on Second Street. And yes Moms, Tony still has both his eyes.
The Fire Department always took a freight sleigh into the woods and cut a big tree…about a 25 footer. They placed it in the middle of Elk Avenue at Third Street. Tony said,”We decorated it with colored lights mostly…not those little ones like now.” After digging a hole in the frozen street by hand the first year, the crew wised up and left that hole in the street for future Christmases. They made a special cover of steel to last through the summer trafic.
Source: Tony Mihelich
Rob Quint